Principles of Management Assignment Essay

All four managers agreed that there was a difference between managing and leading, which means there is no gap. They all defined managing as process, procedures, task focused and results; compared to leading, which was focus on developing people. The positive benefit is it helps implement new processes the within the Contact Centre at MPI because all levels of management have a clear understanding that leading is people development and managing is a task focus. Key to Staff Motivation The key to staff motivation is similar with all four managers; therefore, no real gaps exist. They all agreed that recognizing individual difference, matching people to jobs, what builds up that employee, asking for staff opinions, being part of the solution and inspire them to buy in to the organization plan. The positive benefit to the Contact Centre is making people feel they are part of the solution. In addition, what they do makes the Contact Centre successful. Management are able to outline the expectation and make everyone accountable for his or her actions. As the managers understand the key to motivate staff, it will help when implementing new procedures and having staffed involved in the implementation at the beginning stages with the Contact Centre. Opinion on Expedition The most efficient way of getting people to do things, for all four managers was to communicate expectations and the understanding of why it is important to complete the request. There was no gap with each level of management, starting from the supervisor, to assistant managers and the department manager. They all agreed that providing direction, communicating, understanding and giving guidance to employees on completing the task. This would be a positive benefit to the managers because they will have staff to perform the daily tasks needed to run a contact centre. As all managers, do not use one specific type of motivation factor to influence and engage staff to work efficiently and effectively within the Contact Centre. Communication When discussing the best way to communicate with staff, all four levels of managers agreed that there are various methods to use and, depending on the situation, figuring out what works best. Between the four people, there is no gap with what they state regarding how to communicate information whether it is formal or informal. They all agreed that using the right tool to convey a message would be by email or in person. Communication is the transfer and understanding the meaning of information. This would be a positive benefit as it is important to keep the lines of communication open between front line staff up to management. This would help with relating feedback to existing performance goals and clear expectations. This includes: Giving specific feedback tied to observable behaviour or measurable results. Channel feedback toward key results areas and things the can do something about. Give feedback as soon as possible. Give positive feedback for improvement, not just results. Focus feedback on performance, not personalities. Speak directly and without judgement and base feedback on accurate and credible information. This positive benefit would help staff motivation and understanding new process and procedures to perform them effectively and efficiently to better help our customers. Responsibility for Change When asked who is responsible for change in an organization all four managers agreed that everyone is responsible for change. No gap exists between the four managers and the current practices. The positive benefit to not having gaps is that all levels of management are setting the tone through management behaviour when implementing any change. From managers to employees, everyone needs to be positive role models because everyone is responsible for change. It helps to know the best way for change is employee’s participation and creation of a climate with a high level of trust. Implementing Change in an Organization There is no gap between all four manages on their view of how they think change is best implemented in an organization. They all agreed that providing a clean timeline, planning, objectives and communicating outcomes  is shared with right group of staff. This has a positive benefit to the organization’s culture, since management realizes that change can be difficult to introduce because employees are often committed to old ways of doing things. In addition, management realize how to deal with employee stress while undergoing change. For the positive benefit to be effective, management realizes they need to communicate clearly, involve the necessary employees, share information and have employee buy in to have change be implement efficiently. Drives Change in Organizations There is not a real gap between all four mangers in what drives change in an organization. All four mangers, agreed there are internal and external factors that drive change in an organization such as: growth, technology, customer, politics, business, employees, and market needs. However, being different levels in management the internal and external forces of change differ in position and chain of command. The positive benefit with different points of view is shared by communicating from the bottom to the top manager. Everyone receives a broader view of the changes effecting the organization from front line supervisor to manager. The changes that effect an organization are structure, people and technology. To have views from different levels of management on how these types of change happens in one department, helps give a better understanding to how to handle the change with staff. This is a positive benefit on implementing any change as all levels of mangers work together to help staff understand and motivate the change fundamentally. Top Three Challenges facing Management and Leadership There exists a gap in the four levels of management on their views of what are the top three most pressing challenges facing management and leadership. The challenges differ with each level of management are as followed: corporate approval, amount of changing adversity in MPI, demographic change in the workplace, creating ownership and accountability in the organization, customer expectations, management change, workload and developing in your owner position and trying to develop other employees. These gaps between all levels of management have a combined result of being both a positive benefit and a negative impact implication for the future organization of MPI. The positive benefit is each level of management focus on a different challenge  that can be developed or changed to help employees and the company. For example the roles of each level of management is different in the Contact Centre so working with challenges facing management and leadership when addressed proactively they benefit the future goals of the organization. As they work together to implement any change or add new procedures, they realize they all have different challenges that effect their role. The negative impact is having these different challenges does not necessary mean that they are working towards the same goal. For example, if implementing any change within the Contact Centre, they do not realize the different challenges with each other. The result is they will have trouble understanding the changes that are required to implement to staff that will affect the future organizational goals.

Important Events in the European History That Changed the European Society Essay

The changes are an integral part of progress and development. It is a well-known fact that in order to gain a new level the society should go through the series of different transformation. These transformations are not always pleasant and peaceful but, in general, they are useful for the society and help it to become a better one. In this work I am going to explain how, the European world changed dramatically as a result of a series of stresses in the late 13th to the mid 15th centuries and how such events as Black Plague, the One Hundred Year’s War and the collapse of Papal Power influenced the Medieval European society. The transformation of the Medieval society was long and painful process, which lasted approximately 150 years. The development in the years 1000-1300 brought the positive changes in agriculture, finance and trade. Growing food supply, the creation of guilds, the development of urban life, commercial revolution, the new life of learning – all these changes influenced positively on the society (Beck et al. 387-392). This is the first reason why the later changes were so dramatic for the society. They were so much unexpected that the people were simply not ready for them. The Black Plague, which is also known as the â€Å"Black Death† was probably among the most dramatic events, which constantly changed the face of the Medieval World into the new one. When the historians talk about â€Å"The Black Death,† they mean the specific outbreak of plague that took place in Europe in the mid-14th century. The Black Death came to Europe in October of 1347, spread swiftly through most of Europe by the end of 1349 and on to Scandinavia and Russia in the 1350s† (Shell, â€Å"The Black Death†). This epidemic also came back several times during the rest of the century. These events were followed by mass fear and hysteria. The main changes in social life brought by the plague were the rise of marriage and birth rate, the increase of violence and the upward mobility. The economic effects also were quite dramatic. First of all, â€Å"surplus of goods resulted in overspending; it was swiftly followed by a shortage of goods and inflation† (Shell, â€Å"The Black Death†). The second effect was lack of laborers. The level of trust to the Church also decreased. The One Hundred Years’ War was another historical even, which influenced on the society in the Middle Ages. It â€Å"was a long struggle between England and France over succession to the French throne. It lasted from 1337 to 1453, so it might more accurately be called the â€Å"116 Years’ War† (Wheeler, â€Å"The Hundred Years’ War†). Actually, it was the series of smaller wars and included several battles. The war involved two countries, England and France, which were among the leading ones in Europe during the Middle Ages. Nothing special, that such a massive struggle, which involved a large amount of people during the extremely long period of time, resulted into the drastic demographic, economical and political changes. England lost most of its continental territories and the insanity of the King brought it into the series of internal conflicts. On the contrary, France was able to strengthen its positions. The third important point, which initiated the changes in the European society and brought it to the new era of development, was the collapse of Papal Power. In the Middle Ages the belief that there is one Pope, who rules the church, was extremely strong. That is why the division of the Papacy into the two ruling points, one in Avignon, France and one in Rome was a great tragedy for many people as everything that they believed in, was destroyed. Despite the fact that finally the power was re-united in Rome, â€Å"it never recovered entirely from its stay at Avignon, and from the Great Schism. The power of the popes was never again as great as it had been before the quarrel between Boniface VIII. and the King of France† (Harding, â€Å"The Story of the Middle Ages†). The respect to the Church, which was among the most important factors, which influenced the Middle Ages, was destroyed. That is why these events are so important for the formation of the new society. To sum up, the European society went through the series of dramatic changes from the late 13th century to the mid 15th century. One of the most important factors, which influenced the changes, was the high speed of it. Such events as the Black Death, The Hundred Years’ War and the collapse of Papal Power were the events, which were â€Å"the beginning of end† for the Middle Ages. After them, the society required changes in order to adapt to the new conditions of life.

Aida Model Essay Example for Free

Aida Model Essay Choose cite format: APA MLA Harvard Chicago ASA IEEE AMA Haven't found the essay you want? Get your custom sample essay for only $13.90/page ? Every day we’re bombarded with headlines like these that are designed to grab our attention. In a world full of advertising and information – delivered in all sorts of media from print to websites, billboards to radio, and TV to text messages – every message has to work extremely hard to get noticed. And it’s not just advertising messages that have to work hard; every report you write, presentation you deliver, or email you send is competing for your audience’s attention. As the world of advertising becomes more and more competitive, advertising becomes more and more sophisticated. Yet the basic principles behind advertising copy remain – that it must attract attention and persuade someone to take action. And this idea remains true simply because human nature doesn’t really change. Sure, we become increasingly discerning, but to persuade people to do something, you still need to grab their attention, interest them in how your product or service can help them, and then persuade them to take the action you want them to take, such as buying your product or visiting your website. The acronym AIDA is a handy tool for ensuring that your copy, or other writing, grabs attention. The acronym stands for: Attention (or Attract) Interest Desire Action. These are the four steps you need to take your audience through if you want them to buy your product or visit your website, or indeed to take on board the messages in your report. A slightly more sophisticated version of this is AIDCA/AIDEA, which includes an additional step of Conviction/Evidence between Desire and Action. People are so cynical about advertising messages that coherent evidence may be needed if anyone is going to act! How to Use the Tool: Use the AIDA approach when you write a piece of text that has the ultimate objective of getting others to take action. The elements of the acronym are as follows: 1. Attention/Attract In our media-filled world, you need to be quick and direct to grab people’s attention. Use powerful words, or a picture that will catch the reader’s eye and make them stop and read what you have to say next. With most office workers suffering from e-mail overload, action-seeking e-mails need subject lines that will encourage recipients to open them and read the contents. For example, to encourage people to attend a company training session on giving feedback, the email headline, â€Å"How effective is YOUR feedback?† is more likely to grab attention than the purely factual one of, â€Å"This week’s seminar on feedback†. 2. Interest This is one of the most challenging stages: You’ve got the attention of a chunk of your target audience, but can you engage with them enough so that they’ll want to spend their precious time understanding your message in more detail? Gaining the reader’s interest is a deeper process than grabbing their attention. They will give you a little more time to do it, but you must stay focused on their needs. This means helping them to pick out the messages that are relevant to them quickly. So use bullets and subheadings, and break up the text to make your points stand out. For more information on understanding your target audience’s interests and expectations, and the context of your message, read our article on the Rhetorical Triangle. 3. Desire The Interest and Desire parts of AIDA go hand-in-hand: As you’re building the reader’s interest, you also need to help them understand how what you’re offering can help them in a real way. The main way of doing this is by appealing to their personal needs and wants. So, rather than simply saying â€Å"Our lunchtime seminar will teach you feedback skills†, explain to the audience what’s in it for them: â€Å"Get what you need from other people, and save time and frustration, by learning how to give them good feedback.† Feature and Benefits (FAB) A good way of building the reader’s desire for your offering is to link features and benefits. Hopefully, the significant features of your offering have been designed to give a specific benefit to members of your target market. When it comes to the marketing copy, it’s important that you don’t forget those benefits at this stage. When you describe your offering, don’t just give the facts and features, and expect the audience to work out the benefits for themselves: Tell them the benefits clearly to create that interest and desire. Example: â€Å"This laptop case is made of aluminum,† describes a feature, and leaves the audience thinking â€Å"So what?† Persuade the audience by adding the benefits†.giving a stylish look, that’s kinder to your back and shoulders†. You may want to take this further by appealing to people’s deeper drives†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ giving effortless portability and a sleek appearance and that will be the envy of your friends and co-workers.† 4. Conviction As hardened consumers, we tend to be skeptical about marketing claims. It’s no longer enough simply to say that a book is a bestseller, for example, but readers will take notice if you state (accurately, of course!), that the book has been in the New York Times Bestseller List for 10 weeks, for example. So try to use hard data where it’s available. When you haven’t got the hard data, yet the product offering is sufficiently important, consider generating some data, for example, by commissioning a survey. 5. Action Finally, be very clear about what action you want your readers to take; for example, â€Å"Visit www.mindtools.com now for more information† rather than just leaving people to work out what to do for themselves. – See more at: file:///C:/Users/GOPAL%20RATHORE/Downloads/AIDA%20%20Attention-Interest-Desire-Action%20-%20Communication%20Skills%20Training%20From%20MindTools.com.htm#sthash.nCxC0EZx.dpuf Aida Model. (2016, Apr 07).

Japan's Postwar Foreign Policy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Japan's Postwar Foreign Policy - Essay Example Given that there are facts to support this argument, this paper will identify three ways in which Dower sees Japan’s postwar foreign policy shaped by the experience of defeat and occupation. The paper will also include insights into the ways of embracing defeat just as set herein by John Dower then summarize all the main points.  Analytical review of embracing defeat shows that occupation and defeat of Japan played a major role in shaping this country’s postwar foreign policy. This is because Dower explains absorbingly that after the American forces imposed democracy, the people of Japan experienced an atmosphere of uncertainty and flux. Effective archival, as well as Japanese academic sources, captured that the atmosphere came along with suicidal despair accompanied by surrender. It is of paramount importance to note that Japan and the United States share a mutual and long-lasting international relationship. Additionally, the presence of the GIs drew a huge spectrum of gratitude towards its generosity. Based on this observation, Dower set forth that defeat and occupation shaped Japan’s postwar foreign policy as democracy unleashed things like creative energy, black market entrepreneurship, and prostitution (79). Therefore, it is agreeable that America’s imposition of the revolution that led to six years of occupation and the undeniable transformation of Japan into a democratic country is indeed one of the major ways in which Dower sees Japans postwar foreign policy shaped by its experience of defeat and occupation.  For quite a long time, Japan has continued to struggle to attain favorable relations with her neighboring Asian countries. Ideally, this has been so because of the foreign policy set in place by the American occupation. Indeed, the other way in which Dower finds Japans postwar foreign policy shaped by the experience of defeat and occupation. Obviously, this goes with the pragmatic change in politics in this country. Having introduced the aspect of

Super size me ( the movie ) written aurgument Essay

Super size me ( the movie ) written aurgument - Essay Example And if he is asked to super size the meal, he has to say yes. Spurlock’s reason for his position is to prove that eating products which are modified such as refined carbohydrates and sugars, products that have preservatives and products which have high calories are harmful to our health and it would complicate our heart, liver, blood and other parts of our body. And most of these products are found in fast food restaurants. He uses this experiment as his means to support his reasons. During Spurlock’s first week of McDonald’s diet he gained 8.5 pounds, which is from 185.5 pounds (Spurlock’s weight before McDonald’s diet) to 194 pounds. During the first week Spurlock was consuming 5000 calories per day which is way above the amount of calories he needs per day which is only 2500 calories. During the second weigh in, Spurlock gained 9 pounds, which is from 194 pounds – 203 pounds. During his third weigh in he lost 1 pound, which is from 203 pou nds – 202 pounds. But his cholesterol levels went up from 165 – 225, his SGOT levels went from 21 – 130 and his SGPT levels went up from 20 - 290. The rapid growth of his cholesterol levels and liver enzymes levels (SGOT/SGPT) made the doctor advice Spurlock to stop his high fat diet before it gets worse. The people who would disagree with Spurlock are the people who are behind the fast food company. The fast food company claims that they are part of the obesity problem but they also claimed that people have the freedom to choose where and what to eat. Fast food restaurants don’t force people to eat their products, but billions are spent on advertising these products. It is on paper, radio, television and internet. Plus they have this must-have-toys and playgrounds which is very inviting to the kids. Spurlock responds to this by letting people have more healthy options. Spurlock visited numerous

How the Company Seeks To Deliver Customer Value Assignment

How the Company Seeks To Deliver Customer Value - Assignment Example The corporation is committed towards, meeting the needs and tastes of its discriminating customers spread across the world with continuous innovation and by delivering quality of drinks. In order to strengthen its brand image and increase customer awareness, the company makes considerable investment in sales and marketing activities. The operations of the company are categorised into six major segments which involve Eurasia and Africa, Latin America, Pacific, Europe, North America, Bottling Investments and Corporate (Hartogh, 2007). Correspondingly, the purpose of the report is to critically examine and explain how the selected company i.e. The Coca-Cola Company seeks to deliver customer value. Organisational Objectives The Coca-Cola Company has established missions and objectives in order to guide its operations in the future period. Accordingly, the mission and objectives of the company are to: Refresh the entire world Inspire moments of cheerfulness Create value and ascertain tran sformation everywhere the company involves Similarly, the organisation has also articulated certain vision in order achieve its missions effectively and smoothly. Correspondingly, the visions of the company are subdivided into six major categories which include profit, people, portfolio, partners, planet and productivity. The vision of the company is briefly explained below: Profit: The company intends to provide fair returns to its shareholders while performing its organisational responsibilities People: The organisation aims at offering a cordial place for its employees to work wherein every individual is inspired to contribute their best towards the accomplishment of the organisational missions Portfolio: Coca Cola further intends to create new brands and sustain strong ‘brand portfolio’ by prudently meeting the needs of its customers Partners: The company also intends to grow its business along with ensuring the growth of its partners as well as aims at creating nurturing relationship with all its business partners Planet: Coca Cola not only strives to increase its ability to generate the revenue but also desires to become one of the most responsible corporate citizens Productivity: It aims at being a highly operative, lean and fast-moving corporation Source: (The Coca-Cola Company, 2013) Product and Brand Portfolio Coca-Cola offers an assortment of 500 brands and 3500 beverage products in different locations of its operations. The products of the company include sparkling and still beverages such as water, teas, coffees, juice drinks, sport drinks and energy drinks. It can be stated that the organisation has strong brand image across the globe. Essentially, a brand can be defined as the promise made by the business organisation to satisfy the needs of its customers. A strong brand image facilitates the business organisation to reinforce its reputation as well as seek large customer base. As far as branding is concerned for Coca-Cola, it has been ascertained that the company has made maximum utilisation of available resources for developing a strong brand image. The strong brand image of the company has facilitated it to acquire greater competitive market in the non-alcoholic beverage segment (Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc,

Pop-Culture Media Critique Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Pop-Culture Media Critique - Essay Example make use of women as a way to attract gamers, toy and action heroes clones production that ultimately provides messages to girls from the young age that they have to dress up in the so-called Barbie manner etc. Director of the documentary has used footages of news bulletin where the subject of plastic surgery was most important and not the increasing inflation rate (Newsom, 2011). The patriarchy involved against the women has been well indicated in the film where young girls talk about intellect that is more associated with men instead of women. The documentary beholds the message that it is the era of capitalism that has highlighted and focused on the beauty and physical appearance of the girls rather than their achievements and skills. The political intervention is not the only concept on which the director has stressed in the documentary. Overall, it has successfully achieved it methods by using effective points such as talking about the plastic surgery (Newsom, 2011). The writer and director of the documentary, unlike other feminist documentaries, bestow the power of change among women instead of the circumstances and men. The documentary claims that the self-transformation method of change can bring results and it is only in the hands of women (Newsom,

History of voice coil of a speaker Research Paper

History of voice coil of a speaker - Research Paper Example A voice coil in a speaker is the loop of a wire connected to the top side of a loudspeaker conduit. Its main function is to give the motive force to the conduit by use of magnetic field created by current passing through it. The common loudspeaker that is currently in use was developed in the 1920s and uses a magnetic force to move a coil that is attached to a diaphragm. Information passing capabilities of a system through a magnetic-core, memory circuits and peripheral magnetic storage and retrieval devices was a challenge that faced traditional scientists. Although the history of voice coil technologies is particularly complex and tumultuous. Voice coil has been made in linear and rotary designs, but the rotary design has become the dominant design because it requires less space (Kamm, 1996). A much less expensive mechanism is a stepper motor, in which a shaft rotates in discrete steps to new positions in response to changes in the surrounding magnetic field. The functioning of the voice coil and related associates is closely related to the history of magnetism. It is recorded that around 1820’s a scientist, Hans Christian, demonstrated that magnetism was linked to electric current through the use of a wire carrying an electric current close to a magnetic field. This caused a deflection of the compass needle, which was being used at the tim e of the experiment (Schilders, Vorst, & Rommes, 2008). It is important to note that current flows causes the emergence of a magnetic field in the neighboring field. The history of voice coil indicates how abstract scientists ideas of this device has been ongoing since the invention of magnetism. Before any concrete advances could be made utilizing magnetism, scientists needed new tools and techniques that could be used to hear sound from a speaker (Brauer, 2006). One of the challenge was an inability to construct novel experimental materials with the

Why is the Equality and Diversity agenda important in the workplace Essay

Why is the Equality and Diversity agenda important in the workplace - Essay Example This being the case, the allocation of rewards and compensation among individuals is fairly done. Having equality and appreciating diversity in the workplace enables all the workers to have same working opportunities with due regard to the differences that exist between individuals (Garbers and Dupper, 2009). Failure to treat people equally at within the organizational setup may damage the culture and reputation of the company. Treating people equally in a workplace is essential if the organization has to operate effective and production maintained high. This is because inequality leads to poor morale among workers and sometimes laziness among those who are favoured (Garbers and Duppers, 2009). Equality also removes certain barriers to employment and career success for minority groups such as discrimination. The existence of diversity in the workplace in some cases leads to an increasing in positive competition and higher efficiency as the organisation hires qualified and energetic people and who have varieties of talents and skills (Cornelius, 2002). This helps and motivates the employers to develop their potentials and talents of the workforce hence utilising and maximising the efficiency of the organisation. Every employee in the organisation is entitled to a working condition that that promotes self esteem and respect in spite of their differences. Diversity in the workplace makes employees be able to understand and appreciate other people’s cultures according to Estlund (2003). Diversity in a work place, honours and appreciates skills, talents and knowledge of people at work by adding special richness toward teamwork and cohesiveness. The existence of diversity in the company provides an opportunity to workers to learn new skills and foster their various talents. Profit and non-profit companies requires diversity to become innovative, creative and open to changes hence

Success of Product Repositioning Strategy for Class B Office Essay

Success of Product Repositioning Strategy for Class B Office Development in Moscow - Essay Example My company hired by a real estate investments fund, an owner of this property, received commercial contract to arrange marketing campaign and to sell these buildings as residential property. The reasoning behind this strategy is quite simple. On one hand, relatively small investors receive opportunity to invest into lucrative office property market in Moscow, which has 10-12% rate of return on investment compared to 5-6% that of residential property market. On the other hand, property developers receive so much desired cash significantly decreasing the whole property development cycle and improve their own rate of return on investment. The classical scheme (when office buildings are kept by developers to receive lease income or sold to strategic investors interested in regular income stream provided by lease payments) is modified with a new buy option for typical clients (lease holders) and completely a new option for residential property investors. Despite recent severe turbulence o n the equity markets and overall pessimistic attitude towards any long term investments our group managed to achieve remarkable results. The success of the strategy is proven by retail sale of a number of office buildings in Moscow. The purpose of this essay is to illustrate how theoretical strategic tools can be used in a real business situation to identify new business innovations and to assess how close the theory is to reality. The strategy theory undoubtedly provides useful tools for assessing current situation and identifying new opportunities. Elements of Five forces, basic supply – demand analyses, Value creation model, ERRC (Eliminate, Raise, Reduce, and Create) grid, reluctant customers and non-customers issues are theory tools used in the analysis. The analysis consists of macro and micro examination of the current commercial property industry situation in Moscow, and formulation of new opportunities in the office property sector of the industry based on the above analysis. The description of the real estate investment market in Russia In the situation of global market economic crisis, investors are becoming more risk averse and switching investment portfolios in favor of core assets like gold and real estate. Investments in property market in Russia in 2011 demonstrated 46% year on year growth with the highest volumes of 7 bn USD (See Exhibit 1 Investment volume dynamics), of which the commercial real estate sector accounts for about 95% (See Exhibit 1 Investment by sector). 2011 in Russia was remarkable by the rising number of foreign capital investments, which comprise around 45% of the total investment volume (See Exhibit Investment by investor origin). The reason for this is potentially high demand almost on all sorts of commercial property. Retail and office segments usually dominate the sector investments having 40% of total investment volume each (See Exhibit 1 Investment by sector). Moreover, the deal size increased in 2011: the numb er of deals exceeding 100 mn USD increased to 33% of total number of deals compared to 23% 2010. The market sector prime yields in Moscow stabilized at 9% in office and 11% in warehouse sectors in 2011 from the recent highs of 11.5% and 14.5% in 2009 (See 1 Exhibit Prime yield dynamics in Moscow) reaching pre crisis levels achieved by the market in 2007-2008. Historically, the office sector in Moscow has been the most attractive for

First Chapter of Lord of the Flies Essay Example for Free

First Chapter of Lord of the Flies Essay The first chapter of Lord Of the Flies introduces Ralph at the very start roaming the jungle. This contributes to the mysteriousness of the literature. Not telling you where he came from or why he is there makes the story enticing and entertaining. The author was adding to the rising action. The setting in the very beginning was the Jungle. After Ralph walks for a small amount of time, a voice calls out to him asking for help, and to wait up. This is another way to make the story seem mysterious. He learns it is a boy with the nickname Piggy. Piggy joins Ralph and they walk to a lagoon. There they find a conch shell and Ralph blows through the conch which then calls on an large amount of boys. The author most likely added this to make another curve to the story. To show how much about the place Ralph and Piggy didn’t know. When the large group arrived, a boy named Jack Merridew asked where the ship was, and where an adult was. This showed how ignorant Ralph was because he had no clue what the conch sound meant to the people that were already there. Then Johnny and the twins Sam and Eric arrived along with many other younger and older boys. They talk as if they all have an education which shows they were also put here, not born here. The dialog seems modern and easily understandable, which shows that the setting is more recent than historical. Ralph is voted leader and commands that they explore to see if where they are is an island. Accompanying Ralph is Simon and Jack. Piggy is left behind to log names, which upsets him. The reason the author wrote about the exploration is to show the others don’t know where they are either. Throughout the venture, the boys are faced with a series of things in their path. They push a boulder off a cliff. The author most likely added this to show they weren’t hopelessly stranded on the island. The end of the chapter the boys realized they were hungry. They searched for food and found a pig, in the grips of the ‘creepers’. The author didn’t explain what the creepers were and it made it much more elusive. Jack fails to stab the pig quick enough and he made up excuses as to why he couldn’t. It shows that he isn’t nearly as tough as he lead on to be. He slams his knife into the tree to show he is in fact still the alpha male. The first chapter left many unanswered questions.

History of Marco Polo

History of Marco Polo The Travels of Marco Polo MarcoPolo was born in 1254 when Italy was split into fighting city states. Thirteenth century Europe saw a huge increase in geographical knowledge and anincrease in trade with the Far East and Western Europe. One country that had the Europeans fascinated was China and they all wanted to establish trade andtravel there. Contact with the Far East was established by such men as Giovanni da Pian del Carpini and William of Rubrouck who were sent by Louis IX of France, which happened before the Tartar conquest of Asia Minor and the beginning of Tartar embassies in the West by the late thirteenth century. Routes of trade and opportunities that existed during Roman rule were reopened. Niccolo Polo and Maffeo Polo, the father and uncle of young Marco Polo, left him behind and set off for an epic journey eastward towards the court of the khan of the Pipchak Tartars at Serai. The brothers Niccolo and Maffeo stayed there for over a year while collecting asignificant profit. The brothers decided to return to Venice, but they found that their path was cut off by local wars. So the brothers made the decision to go to the great khan of China. They arrived in Beijing and were received very graciously by the great khan. After doing business there, the khan wanted toknow about the Christian life and told them to go b ack to Venice to see the Pope and return with Christian missionaries for the education of the royal court. The great khan also wanted them to return through Jerusalem with Holy Oil from the lamp which was kept burning over the Sepulchre of our Lord Jesus Christ. To help their journey, the brothers were given the service of a Tartar guide and anything they needed in Tartar territory. Aftera long and treacherous journey on land to Venice, Niccolo and Maffeo made it in1268 and found that Pope Clement IV had recently died and no successor had been elected. Gregory X was elected the new Pope, and in 1271, Maffeo and Niccolo managed to secure the services of two inept Dominicans who would soon decide to desert the mission. The Polos went back to Beijing anyway, this time taking with them Marco, the teenage son of Niccolo Polo, who would become one of the most traveled people in the world. Marco, his father Niccolo, and his uncle Maffeo began their journey by sea to Acre in 1271. They arrived at the mouth of the Persian Gulf and decided to not travel by sea but to turn north and follow the ancient caravan routes through Iraq and Persia. The Polos went through Turkmenistan and Persia until they hit the Oxus River (now called the Amu Darya). They traveled across the plain of Pamir and crossed the desolate Gobi Desert where they then made it to the mercantile cities of Samarqand, Yarkant (Shache), and Kashgar (Kashi). Located in the northwest partof China, they reached Tangut. After a very long journey, the three Polos were made welcome at Shangdu the summer capital of the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan in 1275. Marco, the youngest Polo, soon became a favorite in the Chinese court ofthe Great Kublai Khan. After studying and becoming fluent in the native languages, Marco Polo became a commissioner in the Mongol government in 1277. Kublai Khan trusted the Venetian Marco Polo so much that he relied on his advice in many important affairs. The descriptions Marco Polo gave of the emperors palace fired the imaginations of generations of explorers andtravelers, all of whom wished to view for themselves the eight square miles of enclosed barracks, parade grounds, vast arsenals, storerooms, living quarters, library, and especially the treasury. As a trusted agent of Kublai Khan for seventeen years, Marco Polo had a very unique opportunity to see a developed and sophisticated way of life not seen by Western culture. Kublai Khan trusted Marco Polo so much that he made him governor of Yangzhou. Marco Polo visited nearly every part of both northern and southern China in his long and loyal service to the great khan, using the imperial horse andpacket-boat system that was kept in readiness for the comfort of governmentofficials. Marco Polo was kept in constant service of the khan by cataloging and describing in detail many huge cities, provinces, and major commercial towns. He was interested in everything, including the manufacturing arts, commerce, architecture, the residents in each area, and many other things. Marco Polo was very impressed and intrigued by the silk industry and the book contains an excellent early picture of silk culture, weaving, dying, and finishing. The treasures of the Chinese cities must have seemed unreal to thirteenth century Europe. Marco Polos description of Hangzhou included the fabled twelve thousand bridges of the city, its many huge markets and bazaars, its cavernous warehouses for its trade with India, and even its consumption of six tons of p epper a day. Marco Polo also visited India on business and in the same great detail recorded its commercial life. He also may have visited the steppes of Asia, or the original land of the Moguls, where Kublai Khans ancestors may have grazed their herds. Even though it is very doubtful that he traveled so far north, it may have been possible that the Venetian made it to Siberia. His accounts of his many journeys also indicate great interest towards the islands south of China, including the Philippines. Around 1292, the three Polos desired to return to their home, but they were so favored that Kublai Khan would not let them leave. It was very hard for him to let them leave, but in reluctance he permitted them to go withan official commission to take the Mogul princes daughter to her wedding in Persia. It took them three years to return home even though they primarily traveled by ship. On the way Marco Polo recorded his impressions of Java also know as the great island, and many other places like Madagascar, Zanzibar, Sri Lanka, Dragoian. They crossed the Red Sea and the adventurers finally reached Venice in 1295. Their extraordinary odyssey that lasted nearly twenty years finally came to an end.   Whent he Polos arrived to their old home their family that was staying there had presumed them dead and didnt believe it was they and would not let them in the house. After some arguing, the Polos convinced them that they really were who they said and their relatives allowed them in. Then Marco Polo was captured by the warring Genoese and imprisoned. While he was in prison, he dictated his experiences to prisoner and writer Rustichello of Pisa. The book was called Divisamentdou monde, later turned into The Travels of Marco Polo, 1579. Marco Polos uncle and father fell into the background and the young Marco Polo became the main figure. The great and in detail story was very readable and made a huge impression on Europe. The book was received in awe and it was not fully believed until other travelers to China verified parts of the tale. Christopher Columbus may have been stimulated to travel by this book and maybe many other famous explorers. Marco Polos account of his travels in Asia was one of the primary sources for the European image of Far East until the late nineteenth century.

Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman

Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman When in 1792 the French minister for education proposed a revolutionary system of state-supported system of public education for men only, Mary Wollstonecraft was outraged. As a concrete embodiment of the French revolutions promise to redress the wrongs of past, this proposal seemed a betrayal of all that the revolution stood for. Wollstonecraft responded with A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, arguing a simple principle: that if she (woman) be not prepared by education to become the companion of man , she will stop the progress of knowledge and virtue ; for truth must be common to all or it will inefficacious with respect to its influence on general practice. Just one year earlier she had leapt to the defense of Richard Price and Thomas Paine in her Vindication of the Rights of Men against the attack of Edmund Burke in his Reflections on the Revolutions in France, she now turned her attention to the injustice that presented itself in this revolutionary program for universal educa tion in France. The context of the Vindication of the Rights of Woman was written as a response to Rousseaus immensely influential book Emile, which laid out Rousseaus vision of how boys should be educated. In the process Rousseau created a character; a female associate for Emile named Sophie and in the process slighted the education of women. In this essay we would explore that how successfully Wollstonecrafts Vindication of the Rights of Women is expressing the ways in which women could improve themselves and how society would benefit from this in 1790s and how affected the impact on patriarchal oppression and on the feminism as a whole. J.J Rousseau primarily claimed that we are inherently good, but we become corrupted by the evils of society. We are born good and that is our natural state. Through attending to nature we are more likely to live a life of virtue. In Emile, which is Rousseaus influential book, he was able to dramatize his ideas and reach a very wide audience. He made, it can be argue, the first comprehensive attempt to describe a system of education according to that he saw as nature. In his educational theories Rousseau attempted to preserve natures pure state. His concept of negative education allowed a child to discover for himself and to be punished by the nature he sought to defy. The tutor must not try to reason with the child or show authority. Books would not be forced on the child; at twelve Emile would hardly know what to do with a book. Positive education, or direct instruction, would only begin at approximately the age of adulthood, and then the studies would be based on the students natur al curiosity. Rousseau stressed utility, the need for teaching things with practical applications. This concept of negative education as applicable to women was totally inconceivable to Rousseau. Rousseau outlines his theories for the ideal education for the women in chapter V of Emile. He viewed womens options as entirely limited to the roles of wife and mother. What need would there be to allow her to determine for herself when nature had already physiologically dictated her destiny Rousseau demanded a reversion to primitivism in the education of women, offering minimal vocational training while insisting on her inability to reason and her inferiority to man. A womans education must be planned in relation to man.[S]he will always be in subjection to a man, and she will never be free to set her own opinion above his.(Rousseau p:176). He stresses freedom of movement and physical exertion for Emile, asserting that weak bodies contain weak minds. At the same time he discourages Sophie from too much physical activity and uses her weakness as another proof of her inferiority. The object of that cultivation is different. In the one sex it is the development of corporeal powers; in the other, that of personal charms, (Rousseau:pp.322) The power a woman have in Roussseaus poltical doctrine is dependent on the power allotted them by nature. And that power can be reduced to a simple law of nature. For nature has endowed woman with a power of stimulating mans passions in excess for mans power of satisfying those passions, and has thus made him dependent on her goodwill, and compelled him in his turn to endeavor to please her, so that she may be willing is superior strength. Is it weakness which yields to force, or is it voluntary self-surrender? This uncertainty constitutes the chief charm of the mans victory, and the woman is usually cunning enough to leave him in doubt. (Emile: 387) Rousseau emphasized the fundamentally different roles of men and women, he considers men and women complimentary to each other , women roles is to nurture and essential if men free to take on public roles and warrior and politicians. In Emile,Sophie is his sexual identity. Rousseau considers a mans union with a woman a debasement of his nature. Rousseau has a view of marriage apparently quite traditional in many respects, but he does not defend that arrangement traditionally. Rousseaus Emile makes the wife responsible for keeping the man at home and she is to maintain in him a sense of his freedom and yet at the same time use all sort of feminine charms and intelligent deceptions to make sure that he wants to stay at him, still free but also fulfilling his parental duty. Rousseau considers wifes job, simply put, is to deceive the man into staying at home by sustaining for him the illusion of his freedom, by serving his need for such a psychological state, that point is discussed by W ollstonecraft that if Sophie has to play complicated role of such a smart understanding wife, she has to know the men traits and nature, psychology of men to deal with them. Rousseau anticipates this stance and argues against it, making the case that if women seek to compete with men by defining themselves in terms of male virtues, then they will foster a state of society in which they are even more than before the servants of men. Men are better at being men than women are, Rousseau claims. Rousseau explains that Sophies education needs to be different because she is to be future mother, and women are designed by nature for motherhood. While insisting on the importance of motherhood, he stumbles on womens role as mothers. In addressing mothers in Book I of Emile, he acknowledges their primacy in the education of youth. By denying women the ability to reason he denies them the ability to raise children, which Mary Wollstonecraft later attempts to prove. Mary Wollstonecraft applauded Rousseaus scheme for Emile but deplored the neglect of Emils perfect wife, Sophie in her book The Vindication of the Rights of Woman written in response to Rousseau. Wollstonecraft seeks to find a rational explanation for the state of her sex. She questions whether women are really created for the pleasure of men. She initiates her attack on patriarchal oppression in the first page of the introduction explaining how men have created books `considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than affectionate wives and rational mothers (P:11): then on Sophies garb simple as it seems, was only put in its proper order to be taken to pieces by the imagination. To this she retorts, Is this modesty ? Is this a preparation for immortality? she accuses Rousseau of depicting not a wife and sensible mother, but a pleasing mistress. She challenges Rousseaus depiction of men having superior strength and free will to do experiences. Let us then , by being allowed to take the same exercise as boys, not only during infancy , but youth, arrive at perfection of boys, that we many know how far the natural superiority of man extends. She firmly endorses the nothing of the public space in which people can compete, she says, in effect, give women access to this public space, and if we can not hold our own , then lets concede that women are not the same as men and change things accordingly. But let us first give women a chance. In the period prior to the enlightenment women were legally and socially inferior. One example of this is in crime: a man convicted of murdering his wife would be hanged, but a woman convicted of murdering her husband would, by law, be burned alive (Misenheimer,1981:p21). They were also unequal in financial and property rights, women were uneducated and taught to be pure and respectable so they could gain a husband and a home and the legal position of most women totally dependence on their husbands (Mill,1878). Its quite clear that Wollstonecrafts world did have considerable oppression and it was within this context that her attack on male dominance of society was based. She expresses how women are `legally prostituted, attacking marriage and the power men have through marriage (P:75). She attacks that women can only advance through marriage explaining how its the only security of public freedom and universal happiness (P:18). She also argues heavily against the socially constructed' position of women, which has been forced upon them by men. This is possibly her strongest argument against male dominance which conforms to the ideas of what is natural and what has been created by man; similar to the ideas of Thomas Paine, Rousseau. The idea is that the subjugation of women is unnatural and obviously goes against rational, enlightened and more important moral society. Wollstonecraft argues that if marriage is strongest institution and cement of society then men and women should be educated equally regardless of their sexes and marriage never can be held sacred till women, by being brought up with men, are prepared to be their companions rather than their mistresses. Wollstonecraft proposes that education should be accessible through national establishments as private education is confined to only elite class. She proposes her radical idea of educating girls with boys and that girls should be taught anatomy and medicine to make them rational nurses of their infants, parents and husbands. As living in mens society Wollstonecraft realized that her suggestions can cause a stir, hence the major pitch of her appeal for the rights of women might be seen as a call to extend to women the same educational opportunities as those extended to men. She cautions that she has no desire to breed a generation of independent and unattached women like herself, but that she seeks to develop wiser and more virtuous mothers. She believes that childrens characters are formed before the age of seven; hence it is very necessary to raise a child by an educated mother rather than by addle-headed mother. Wollstonecraft trying to make the male society of her time to realize that present education of women focuses far too much on attempts to please and tease men , which is no good basis either for the development of a morally responsible personality , longer lasting marriages or good mothers. And if we educate our women as equal to men, society can really benefit and if they continue to be excluded, society will suffer, it will not progress. Without stressing independence she believes that once women gain intellectual equality, they should be given political and economic equality as well. A Vindication of rights of Woman was a vital piece of work for the Feminists, however it did not really get appreciated among the women of 18th century. It is quite clear that her thoughts were revolutionary for her period and were more suited to the society of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth century, when feminists would reintegrate Wollstonecrafts work into their movements. But Rousseaus point is still being made by those who think that a good deal of mainstream liberal feminism, for all its impressive record of social and political achievements, is demanding that women live by a standard foreign to them, that they become like men rather than developing fully as women. Those who, like Wollstonecraft, deny the classification of men and women as different, and this debate between Rousseau and Wollstonecraft is still very much alive in modern arguments about feminism. The present fierce arguments between and within various mens and womens groups indicate that the question is n ot yet off the table. These arguments manifest themselves, among other things, in modern concerns about the rising frequency of divorce and of men abandoning their families, of super-moms, of teenage pregnancies, of the need for men to be in control of the family, and so on, all of which remind us that two hundred years after Wollstonecrafts important contribution this great debate, the conversations continue with no loss of urgency.

Bottle Rockets :: essays research papers

A rocket in its simplest form is a chamber enclosing a gas under pressure. A small opening at one end of the chamber allows the gas to escape, and in doing so provides a thrust that propels the rocket in the opposite direction. Newton’s laws can be used to explain this his laws in the simplest terms can be explained like this: First law- Objects at rest will stay at rest and objects in motion will stay in motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. Second law- Force is equal to mass times acceleration. Third law- For every action there is always an opposite and equal reaction. For the rocket to launch it needed to be propelled by something, for our rockets we used regular air and compressed it. Upon releasing the stopper Newton’s first law went into effect which states that for something to move a force must act upon it in this case the gas moving out of the bottle. When the stopper was pulled the pressure in the bottle forced its way down, which applied the force to start the motion of the bottle. His 3rd law can also explain this because the water going down forces the rocket in the exact opposite direction the water goes. Which is why one time when we shot the rocket it flew at an angle. Also it shows why the launchers had stoppers, because if they didn’t the cork wasn’t strong enough to hold that pressure and would cause the rocket to begin flight prematurely. His second law can be used to describe how high and fast the rocket will go. If you wanted it to go really high and fast you would just pump more pressure into it then if you didn’t want it to go that high. You can determine how much force is needed by multiplying the mass by the acceleration.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Our rocket was fairly decent the only problems were that the wings were not completely stable. Our egg survived in the capsule we built and one other egg even survived with out being in a capsule at all.

Nitrogen as a Fertilizer, Nutrient, or Pollutant Essay -- Nitrogen Bio

Nitrogen as a Fertilizer, Nutrient, or Pollutant Nitrogen can always be a fertilizer, nutrient, or pollutant depending on the circumstances and the environment it is in. As a fertilizer, nitrogen can be extremely useful in aiding the growth of many plants. As a nutrient, nitrogen is essential to many plants growth and survival. As a pollutant, nitrogen can not only affect the plant at the given time but be very detrimental many years down the road. No matter where you go nitrogen will always be either a fertilizer, nutrient, or pollutant. Nitrogen can be considered as both a fertilizer and nutrient under the right constraints. I will use citrus plants as one of my examples. For citrus growers applying nitrogen to plants is a common and needed practice. â€Å"Spring is the best time to apply nitrogen to citrus. Research has shown that the demand for nitrogen in citrus is highest from bloom through June and most of the supplemental nitrogen fertilizer should be applied during this time period.† It is a major key to plant growth and development. Nitrogen is crucial to citrus plants for optimal growth and yield. Without nitrogen you can see suffering results for many years down the road. Citrus responds readily to nitrogen nutrition. Current and past research shows that if nitrogen is maintained in fall-sampled citrus leaves between 2.4 and 2.6 % on a dry-weight basis for oranges, and between 2.2 and 2.4 % for lemons, a good balance is struck between yield, size and fruit quality. The evidence linking nitrogen to puff, crease, smaller fruit size and staining does exist, but these negative effects are most significant at nitrogen levels greater than 2.6 % nitrogen. Some growers have decreased nitrogen applicati... ...le harming crops up to 8 years later. Nitrogen is an important element, whether it is in water or some other form, but either way it can easily be a vicious pollutant. What category do you think nitrogen should be in--fertilizer, nutrient, or pollutant? Should you take into account how much nitrogen can help a plant like with fruit size or yield? Or should you weigh heavily on how much nitrogen can hurt a plant and for such an extended period of time? There are many ways to dispute either of these choices for or against but none of them are a perfect fit. Works Cited Craig Kallsen. http://cekern.ucdavis.edu/Custom Program143/Citrus Nitrogen Fertilizer.htm. Power, Sally A.; Green, Emma R.; Barker, Chris G.; Bell, J. Nigel B.; Ashmore, Mike R. "Ecosystem recovery: heathland response to a reduction in nitrogen deposition." Global Change Biology 12

Blake :: essays research papers

A rebel all of his life, Blake was once arrested on a trumped up charge of sedition. Of course, he was a complete sympathizer with the forces of revolution, both in America and France. He was a personal friend of Thomas Paine and made the American War of Independence and French Revolution parts of his grand mythology in his America: A Prophecy and Europe: A Prophecy. Blake is frequently referred to as a mystic, but this is not really accurate. He deliberately wrote in the style of the Hebrew prophets and apocalyptic writers. He envisioned his works as expressions of prophecy, following in the footsteps (or, more precisely strapping on the sandals) of Elijah and Milton. In fact, he clearly believed himself to be the living embodiment of the spirit of Milton. Most of Blake's paintings (such as "The Ancient of Days" above, the frontispiece to Europe: a Prophecy) are actually prints made from copper plates, which he etched in a method he claimed was revealed to him in a dream. He and his wife colored these prints with water colors. Thus each print is itself a unique work of art. As an artist Blake broke the ground that would later be cultivated by the Pre-Raphaelites. His work is for the most part done on a very small scale. His illuminated works and engravings are all only inches in size, yet they are meticulous in detail. And each of them is, in a sense, merely a part of a titanic whole. A special note for students: Since we began The William Blake Page in 1994, we have received hundreds of emails from students asking (sometimes demanding in very rude language) that we provide literary criticism on our site or else personally write back with an analysis of one or more poems or themes in Blake's work so that they can use it to fulfill one of their classroom assignments. On occassion these emails have been so insulting that we have considered closing the site. The William Blake Page is NOT intended to replace the library. The Internet is a great place to research where to buy your next car or what they are wearing this year in Paris. But it not the best place to find literary criticism. For one thing anyone can post anything here, without benefit of editors or any other kind of check or balance to maintain reasonable accuracy.

Democratic Origins and Revolutionary Writers, 1776-1820 Essay

James Fenimore Cooper (Photo courtesy Library of Congress) The hard-fought American Revolution against Britain (1775-1783) was the first modern war of liberation against a colonial power. The triumph of American independence seemed to many at the time a divine sign that America and her people were destined for greatness. Military victory fanned nationalistic hopes for a great new literature. Yet with the exception of outstanding political writing, few works of note appeared during or soon after the Revolution. American books were harshly reviewed in England. Americans were painfully aware of their excessive dependence on English literary models. The search for a native literature became a national obsession. As one American magazine editor wrote, around 1816, â€Å"Dependence is a state of degradation fraught with disgrace, and to be dependent on a foreign mind for what we can ourselves produce is to add to the crime of indolence the weakness of stupidity. † Cultural revolutions, unlike military revolutions, cannot be successfully imposed but must grow from the soil of shared experience. Revolutions are expressions of the heart of the people; they grow gradually out of new sensibilities and wealth of experience. It would take 50 years of accumulated history for America to earn its cultural independence and to produce the first great generation of American writers: Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson. America’s literary independence was slowed by a lingering identification with England, an excessive imitation of English or classical literary models, and difficult economic and political conditions that hampered publishing. Revolutionary writers, despite their genuine patriotism, were of necessity self-conscious, and they could never find roots in their American sensibilities. Colonial writers of the revolutionary generation had been born English, had grown to maturity as English citizens, and had cultivated English modes of thought and English fashions in dress and behavior. Their parents and grandparents were English (or European), as were all their friends. Added to this, American awareness of literary fashion still lagged behind the English, and this time lag intensified American imitation. Fifty years after their fame in England, English neoclassic writers such as Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Oliver Goldsmith, and Samuel Johnson were still eagerly imitated in America. Moreover, the heady challenges of building a new nation attracted talented and educated people to politics, law, and diplomacy. These pursuits brought honor, glory, and financial security. Writing, on the other hand, did not pay. Early American writers, now separated from England, effectively had no modern publishers, no audience, and no adequate legal protection. Editorial assistance, distribution, and publicity were rudimentary. Until 1825, most American authors paid printers to publish their work. Obviously only the leisured and independently wealthy, like Washington Irving and the New York Knickerbocker group, or the group of Connecticut poets known as the Hartford Wits, could afford to indulge their interest in writing. The exception, Benjamin Franklin, though from a poor family, was a printer by trade and could publish his own work. Charles Brockden Brown was more typical. The author of several interesting Gothic romances, Brown was the first American author to attempt to live from his writing. But his short life ended in poverty. The lack of an audience was another problem. The small cultivated audience in America wanted well-known European authors, partly out of the exaggerated respect with which former colonies regarded their previous rulers. This preference for English works was not entirely unreasonable, considering the inferiority of American output, but it worsened the situation by depriving American authors of an audience. Only journalism offered financial remuneration, but the mass audience wanted light, undemanding verse and short topical essays — not long or experimental work. The absence of adequate copyright laws was perhaps the clearest cause of literary stagnation. American printers pirating English best-sellers understandably were unwilling to pay an American author for unknown material. The unauthorized reprinting of foreign books was originally seen as a service to the colonies as well as a source of profit for printers like Franklin, who reprinted works of the classics and great European books to educate the American public. Printers everywhere in America followed his lead. There are notorious examples of pirating. Matthew Carey, an important American publisher, paid a London agent — a sort of literary spy — to send copies of unbound pages, or even proofs, to him in fast ships that could sail to America in a month. Carey’s men would sail out to meet the incoming ships in the harbor and speed the pirated books  into print using typesetters who divided the book into sections and worked in shifts around the clock. Such a pirated English book could be reprinted in a day and placed on the shelves for sale in American bookstores almost as fast as in England. Because imported authorized editions were more expensive and could not compete with pirated ones, the copyright situation damaged foreign authors such as Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens, along with American authors. But at least the foreign authors had already been paid by their original publishers and were already well known. Americans such as James Fenimore Cooper not only failed to receive adequate payment, but they had to suffer seeing their works pirated under their noses. Cooper’s first successful book, The Spy (1821), was pirated by four different printers within a month of its appearance. Ironically, the copyright law of 1790, which allowed pirating, was nationalistic in intent. Drafted by Noah Webster, the great lexicographer who later compiled an American dictionary, the law protected only the work of American authors; it was felt that English writers should look out for themselves. Bad as the law was, none of the early publishers were willing to have it changed because it proved profitable for them. Piracy starved the first generation of revolutionary American writers; not surprisingly, the generation after them produced even less work of merit. The high point of piracy, in 1815, corresponds with the low point of American writing. Nevertheless, the cheap and plentiful supply of pirated foreign books and classics in the first 50 years of the new country did educate Americans, including the first great writers, who began to make their appearance around 1825. THE AMERICAN ENLIGHTENMENT The 18th-century American Enlightenment was a movement marked by an emphasis on rationality rather than tradition, scientific inquiry instead of unquestioning religious dogma, and representative government in place of monarchy. Enlightenment thinkers and writers were devoted to the ideals of justice, liberty, and equality as the natural rights of man. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) Benjamin Franklin, whom the Scottish philosopher David Hume called America’s â€Å"first great man of letters,† embodied the Enlightenment ideal of humane rationality. Practical yet idealistic, hard-working and enormously successful, Franklin recorded his early life in his famous Autobiography. Writer, printer, publisher, scientist, philanthropist, and diplomat, he was the most famous and respected private figure of his time. He was the first great self-made man in America, a poor democrat born in an aristocratic age that his fine example helped to liberalize. Franklin was a second-generation immigrant. His Puritan father, a chandler (candle-maker), came to Boston, Massachusetts, from England in 1683. In many ways Franklin’s life illustrates the impact of the Enlightenment on a gifted individual. Self-educated but well-read in John Locke, Lord Shaftesbury, Joseph Addison, and other Enlightenment writers, Franklin learned from them to apply reason to his own life and to break with tradition — in particular the old-fashioned Puritan tradition — when it threatened to smother his ideals. While a youth, Franklin taught himself languages, read widely, and practiced writing for the public. When he moved from Boston to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Franklin already had the kind of education associated with the upper classes. He also had the Puritan capacity for hard, careful work, constant self-scrutiny, and the desire to better himself. These qualities steadily propelled him to wealth, respectability, and honor. Never selfish, Franklin tried to help other ordinary people become successful by sharing his insights and initiating a characteristically American genre — the self-help book. Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack, begun in 1732 and published for many years, made Franklin prosperous and well-known throughout the colonies. In this annual book of useful encouragement, advice, and factual information, amusing characters such as old Father Abraham and Poor Richard exhort the reader in pithy, memorable sayings. In â€Å"The Way to Wealth,† which originally appeared in the Almanack, Father Abraham, â€Å"a plain clean old Man, with white Locks,† quotes Poor Richard at length. â€Å"A Word to the Wise is enough,† he says. â€Å"God helps them that help themselves. † â€Å"Early to Bed, and early to rise, makes a Man healthy, wealthy, and wise. † Poor Richard is a psychologist (â€Å"Industry pays Debts, while Despair encreaseth them†), and he always counsels hard work (â€Å"Diligence is the Mother of Good Luck†). Do not be lazy, he advises, for â€Å"One To-day is worth two tomorrow. â€Å"Sometimes he creates anecdotes to illustrate his points: â€Å"A little Neglect may breed great Mischief†¦. For want of a Nail the Shoe was lost; for want of a Shoe the Horse was lost; and for want of a Horse the Rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the Enemy, all for want of Care about a Horse-shoe Nail. † Franklin was a genius at compressing a moral point: â€Å"What maintains one Vice, would bring up two Children. † â€Å"A small leak will sink a great Ship. † â€Å"Fools make Feasts, and wise Men eat them. † Franklin’s Autobiography is, in part, another self-help book. Written to advise his son, it covers only the early years. The most famous section describes his scientific scheme of self- improvement. Franklin lists 13 virtues: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, and humility. He elaborates on each with a maxim; for example, the temperance maxim is â€Å"Eat not to Dullness. Drink not to Elevation. † A pragmatic scientist, Franklin put the idea of perfectibility to the test, using himself as the experimental subject. To establish good habits, Franklin invented a reusable calendrical record book in which he worked on one virtue each week, recording each lapse with a black spot. His theory prefigures psychological behaviorism, while his systematic method of notation anticipates modern behavior modification. The project of self-improvement blends the Enlightenment belief in perfectibility with the Puritan habit of moral self-scrutiny. Franklin saw early that writing could best advance his ideas, and he therefore deliberately perfected his supple prose style, not as an end in itself but as a tool. â€Å"Write with the learned. Pronounce with the vulgar,† he advised. A scientist, he followed the Royal (scientific) Society’s 1667 advice to use â€Å"a close, naked, natural way of speaking; positive expressions, clear senses, a native easiness, bringing all things as near the mathematical plainness as they can. † Despite his prosperity and fame, Franklin never lost his democratic sensibility, and he was an important figure at the 1787 convention at which the U. S. Constitution was drafted. In his later years, he was president of an antislavery association. One of his last efforts was to promote universal public education. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur (1735-1813) Another Enlightenment figure is Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, whose Letters from an American Farmer (1782) gave Europeans a glowing idea of opportunities for peace, wealth, and pride in America. Neither an American nor a farmer, but a French aristocrat who owned a plantation outside New York City before the Revolution, Crevecoeur enthusiastically praised the colonies for their industry, tolerance, and growing prosperity in 12 letters that depict America as an agrarian paradise — a vision that would inspire Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and many other writers up to the present. Crevecoeur was the earliest European to develop a considered view of America and the new American character. The first to exploit the â€Å"melting pot† image of America, in a famous passage he asks: What then is the American, this new man? He is either a European, or the descendant of a European, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations†¦. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause changes in the world. THE POLITICAL PAMPHLET: Thomas Paine (1737-1809) The passion of Revolutionary literature is found in pamphlets, the most popular form of political literature of the day. Over 2,000 pamphlets were published during the Revolution. The pamphlets thrilled patriots and threatened loyalists; they filled the role of drama, as they were often read aloud in public to excite audiences. American soldiers read them aloud in their camps; British Loyalists threw them into public bonfires. Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense sold over 100,000 copies in the first three months of its publication. It is still rousing today. â€Å"The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind,† Paine wrote, voicing the idea of American exceptionalism still strong in the United States — that in some fundamental sense, since America is a democratic experiment and a country theoretically open to all immigrants, the fate of America foreshadows the fate of humanity at large. Political writings in a democracy had to be clear to appeal to the voters. And to have informed voters, universal education was promoted by many of the founding fathers. One indication of the vigorous, if simple, literary life was the proliferation of newspapers. More newspapers were read in America during the Revolution than anywhere else in the world. Immigration also mandated a simple style. Clarity was vital to a newcomer, for whom English might be a second language. Thomas Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence is clear and logical, but his committee’s modifications made it even simpler. The Federalist Papers, written in support of the Constitution, are also lucid, logical arguments, suitable for debate in a democratic nation. NEOCLASSISM: EPIC, MOCK EPIC, AND SATIRE Unfortunately, â€Å"literary† writing was not as simple and direct as political writing. When trying to write poetry, most educated authors stumbled into the pitfall of elegant neoclassicism. The epic, in particular, exercised a fatal attraction. American literary patriots felt sure that the great American Revolution naturally would find expression in the epic — a long, dramatic narrative poem in elevated language, celebrating the feats of a legendary hero. Many writers tried but none succeeded. Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), one of the group of writers known as the Hartford Wits, is an example. Dwight, who eventually became the president of Yale University, based his epic, The Conquest of Canaan (1785), on the Biblical story of Joshua’s struggle to enter the Promised Land. Dwight cast General Washington, commander of the American army and later the first president of the United States, as Joshua in his allegory and borrowed the couplet form that Alexander Pope used to translate Homer. Dwight’s epic was as boring as it was ambitious. English critics demolished it; even Dwight’s friends, such as John Trumbull (1750-1831), remained unenthusiastic. So much thunder and lightning raged in the melodramatic battle scenes that Trumbull proposed that the epic be provided with lightning rods. Not surprisingly, satirical poetry fared much better than serious verse. The mock epic genre encouraged American poets to use their natural voices and did not lure them into a bog of pretentious and predictable patriotic sentiments and faceless conventional poetic epithets out of the Greek poet Homer and the Roman poet Virgil by way of the English poets. In mock epics like John Trumbull’s good-humored M’Fingal (1776-82), stylized emotions and conventional turns of phrase are ammunition for good satire, and the bombastic oratory of the revolution is itself ridiculed. Modeled on the British poet Samuel Butler’s Hudibras, the mock epic derides a Tory, M’Fingal. It is often pithy, as when noting of condemned criminals facing hanging: No man e’er felt the halter draw With good opinion of the law. M’Fingal went into over 30 editions, was reprinted for a half-century, and was appreciated in England as well as America. Satire appealed to Revolutionary audiences partly because it contained social comment and criticism, and political topics and social problems were the main subjects of the day. The first American comedy to be performed, The Contrast (produced 1787) by Royall Tyler (1757-1826), humorously contrasts Colonel Manly, an American officer, with Dimple, who imitates English fashions. Naturally, Dimple is made to look ridiculous. The play introduces the first Yankee character, Jonathan. Another satirical work, the novel Modern Chivalry, published by Hugh Henry Brackenridge in installments from 1792 to 1815, memorably lampoons the excesses of the age. Brackenridge (1748- 1816), a Scottish immigrant raised on the American frontier, based his huge, picaresque novel on Don Quixote; it describes the misadventures of Captain Farrago and his stupid, brutal, yet appealingly human, servant Teague O’Regan. POET OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION: Philip Freneau (1752-1832). One poet, Philip Freneau, incorporated the new stirrings of European Romanticism and escaped the imitativeness and vague universality of the Hartford Wits. The key to both his success and his failure was his passionately democratic spirit combined with an inflexible temper. The Hartford Wits, all of them undoubted patriots, reflected the general cultural conservatism of the educated classes. Freneau set himself against this holdover of old Tory attitudes, complaining of â€Å"the writings of an aristocratic, speculating faction at Hartford, in favor of monarchy and titular distinctions. â€Å"Although Freneau received a fine education and was as well acquainted with the classics as any Hartford Wit, he embraced liberal and democratic causes. From a Huguenot (radical French Protestant) background, Freneau fought as a militiaman during the Revolutionary War. In 1780, he was captured and imprisoned in two British ships, where he almost died before his family managed to get him released. His poem â€Å"The British Prison Ship† is a bitter condemnation of the cruelties of the British, who wished â€Å"to stain the world with gore. † This piece and other revolutionary works, including â€Å"Eutaw Springs,† â€Å"American Liberty,† â€Å"A Political Litany,† â€Å"A Midnight Consultation,† and â€Å"George the Third’s Soliloquy,† brought him fame as the â€Å"Poet of the American Revolution. † Freneau edited a number of journals during his life, always mindful of the great cause of democracy. When Thomas Jefferson helped him establish the militant, anti-Federalist National Gazette in 1791, Freneau became the first powerful, crusading newspaper editor in America, and the literary predecessor of William Cullen Bryant, William Lloyd Garrison, and H.L. Mencken. As a poet and editor, Freneau adhered to his democratic ideals. His popular poems, published in newspapers for the average reader, regularly celebrated American subjects. â€Å"The Virtue of Tobacco† concerns the indigenous plant, a mainstay of the southern economy, while â€Å"The Jug of Rum† celebrates the alcoholic drink of the West Indies, a crucial commodity of early American trade and a major New World export. Common American characters lived in â€Å"The Pilot of Hatteras,† as well as in poems about quack doctors and bombastic evangelists. Freneau commanded a natural and colloquial style appropriate to a genuine democracy, but he could also rise to refined neoclassic lyricism in often-anthologized works such as â€Å"The Wild Honeysuckle† (1786), which evokes a sweet-smelling native shrub. Not until the â€Å"American Renaissance† that began in the 1820s would American poetry surpass the heights that Freneau had scaled 40 years earlier. Additional groundwork for later literary achievement was laid during the early years. Nationalism inspired publications in many fields, leading to a new appreciation of things American. Noah Webster (1758-1843) devised an American Dictionary, as well as an important reader and speller for the schools. His Spelling Book sold more than 100 million copies over the years. Updated Webster’s dictionaries are still standard today. The American Geography, by Jedidiah Morse, another landmark reference work, promoted knowledge of the vast and expanding American land itself. Some of the most interesting if nonliterary writings of the period are the journals of frontiersmen and explorers such as Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809) and  Zebulon Pike (1779-1813), who wrote accounts of expeditions across the Louisiana Territory, the vast portion of the North American continent that Thomas Jefferson purchased from Napoleon in 1803. WRITERS OF FICTION. The first important fiction writers widely recognized today, Charles Brockden Brown, Washington Irving, and James Fenimore Cooper, used American subjects, historical perspectives, themes of change, and nostalgic tones. They wrote in many prose genres, initiated new forms, and found new ways to make a living through literature. With them, American literature began to be read and appreciated in the United States and abroad. Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810) Already mentioned as the first professional American writer, Charles Brockden Brown was inspired by the English writers Mrs. Radcliffe and English William Godwin. (Radcliffe was known for her terrifying Gothic novels; a novelist and social reformer, Godwin was the father of Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein and married English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. ) Driven by poverty, Brown hastily penned four haunting novels in two years: Wieland (1798), Arthur Mervyn (1799), Ormond (1799), and Edgar Huntley (1799). In them, he developed the genre of American Gothic. The Gothic novel was a popular genre of the day featuring exotic and wild settings, disturbing psychological depth, and much suspense. Trappings included ruined castles or abbeys, ghosts, mysterious secrets, threatening figures, and solitary maidens who survive by their wits and spiritual strength. At their best, such novels offer tremendous suspense and hints of magic, along with profound explorations of the human soul in extremity. Critics suggest that Brown’s Gothic sensibility expresses deep anxieties about the inadequate social institutions of the new nation. Brown used distinctively American settings. A man of ideas, he dramatized scientific theories, developed a personal theory of fiction, and championed high literary standards despite personal poverty. Though flawed, his works are darkly powerful. Increasingly, he is seen as the precursor of romantic writers like Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. He expresses subconscious fears that the outwardly optimistic Enlightenment period drove underground. Washington Irving (1789-1859). The youngest of 11 children born to a well-to-do New York merchant family, Washington Irving became a cultural and diplomatic ambassador to Europe, like Benjamin Franklin and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Despite his talent, he probably would not have become a full-time professional writer, given the lack of financial rewards, if a series of fortuitous incidents had not thrust writing as a profession upon him. Through friends, he was able to publish his Sketch Book (1819-1820) simultaneously in England and America, obtaining copyrights and payment in both countries. The Sketch Book of Geoffrye Crayon (Irving’s pseudonym) contains his two best remembered stories, â€Å"Rip Van Winkle† and â€Å"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. † â€Å"Sketch† aptly describes Irving’s delicate, elegant, yet seemingly casual style, and â€Å"crayon† suggests his ability as a colorist or creator of rich, nuanced tones and emotional effects. In the Sketch Book, Irving transforms the Catskill Mountains along the Hudson River north of New York City into a fabulous, magical region. American readers gratefully accepted Irving’s imagined â€Å"history† of the Catskills, despite the fact (unknown to them) that he had adapted his stories from a German source. Irving gave America something it badly needed in the brash, materialistic early years: an imaginative way of relating to the new land. No writer was as successful as Irving at humanizing the land, endowing it with a name and a face and a set of legends. The story of â€Å"Rip Van Winkle,† who slept for 20 years, waking to find the colonies had become independent, eventually became folklore. It was adapted for the stage, went into the oral tradition, and was gradually accepted as authentic American legend by generations of Americans. Irving discovered and helped satisfy the raw new nation’s sense of history. His numerous works may be seen as his devoted attempts to build the new nation’s soul by recreating history and giving it living, breathing, imaginative life. For subjects, he chose the most dramatic aspects of American history: the discovery of the New World, the first president and national hero, and the westward exploration. His earliest work was a sparkling, satirical History of New York (1809) under the Dutch, ostensibly written by Diedrich Knickerbocker (hence the name of Irving’s friends and New York writers of the day, the â€Å"Knickerbocker School†). James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) James Fenimore Cooper, like Irving, evoked a sense of the past and gave it a local habitation and a name. In Cooper, though, one finds the powerful myth of a golden age and the poignance of its loss. While Irving and other American writers before and after him scoured Europe in search of its legends, castles, and great themes, Cooper grasped the essential myth of America: that it was timeless, like the wilderness. American history was a trespass on the eternal; European history in America was a reenactment of the fall in the Garden of Eden. The cyclical realm of nature was glimpsed only in the act of destroying it: The wilderness disappeared in front of American eyes, vanishing before the oncoming pioneers like a mirage. This is Cooper’s basic tragic vision of the ironic destruction of the wilderness, the new Eden that had attracted the colonists in the first place. Personal experience enabled Cooper to write vividly of the transformation of the wilderness and of other subjects such as the sea and the clash of peoples from different cultures. The son of a Quaker family, he grew up on his father’s remote estate at Otsego Lake (now Cooperstown) in central New York State. Although this area was relatively peaceful during Cooper’s boyhood, it had once been the scene of an Indian massacre. Young Fenimore Cooper grew up in an almost feudal environment. His father, Judge Cooper, was a landowner and leader. Cooper saw frontiersmen and Indians at Otsego Lake as a boy; in later life, bold white settlers intruded on his land. Natty Bumppo, Cooper’s renowned literary character, embodies his vision of the frontiersman as a gentleman, a Jeffersonian â€Å"natural aristocrat. † Early in 1823, in The Pioneers, Cooper had begun to discover Bumppo. Natty is the first famous frontiersman in American literature and the literary forerunner of countless cowboy and backwoods heroes. He is the idealized, upright individualist who is better than the society he protects. Poor and isolated, yet pure, he is a touchstone for ethical values and prefigures Herman Melville’s Billy Budd and Mark Twain’s Huck Finn. Based in part on the real life of American pioneer Daniel Boone — who was a Quaker like Cooper — Natty Bumppo, an outstanding woodsman like Boone, was a peaceful man adopted by an Indian tribe. Both Boone and the fictional Bumppo loved nature and freedom. They constantly kept moving west to escape the oncoming settlers they had guided into the wilderness, and they became legends in their own lifetimes. Natty is also chaste, high-minded, and deeply spiritual: He is the Christian knight of medieval romances transposed to the virgin forest and rocky soil of America. The unifying thread of the five novels collectively known as the Leather-Stocking Tales is the life of Natty Bumppo. Cooper’s finest achievement, they constitute a vast prose epic with the North American continent as setting, Indian tribes as characters, and great wars and westward migration as social background. The novels bring to life frontier America from 1740 to 1804. Cooper’s novels portray the successive waves of the frontier settlement: the original wilderness inhabited by Indians; the arrival of the first whites as scouts, soldiers, traders, and frontiersmen; the coming of the poor, rough settler families; and the final arrival of the middle class, bringing the first professionals — the judge, the physician, and the banker. Each incoming wave displaced the earlier: Whites displaced the Indians, who retreated westward; the â€Å"civilized† middle classes who erected schools, churches, and jails displaced the lower-class individualistic frontier folk, who moved further west, in turn displacing the Indians who had preceded them. Cooper evokes the endless, inevitable wave of settlers, seeing not only the gains but the losses. Cooper’s novels reveal a deep tension between the lone individual and society, nature and culture, spirituality and organized religion. In Cooper, the natural world and the Indian are fundamentally good — as is the highly civilized realm associated with his most cultured characters. Intermediate characters are often suspect, especially greedy, poor white settlers who are too uneducated or unrefined to appreciate nature or culture. Like Rudyard Kipling, E. M. Forster, Herman Melville, and other sensitive observers of widely varied cultures interacting with each other, Cooper was a cultural relativist. He understood that no culture had a monopoly on virtue or refinement. Cooper accepted the American condition while Irving did not. Irving addressed the American setting as a European might have — by importing and adapting European legends, culture, and history. Cooper took the process a step farther. He created American settings and new, distinctively American characters and themes. He was the first to sound the recurring tragic note in American fiction. WOMEN AND MINORITIES Although the colonial period produced several women writers of note, the revolutionary era did not further the work of women and minorities, despite the many schools, magazines, newspapers, and literary clubs that were springing up. Colonial women such as Anne Bradstreet, Anne Hutchinson, Ann Cotton, and Sarah Kemble Knight exerted considerable social and literary influence in spite of primitive conditions and dangers; of the 18 women who came to America on the ship Mayflower in 1620, only four survived the first year. When every able-bodied person counted and conditions were fluid, innate talent could find expression. But as cultural institutions became formalized in the new republic, women and minorities gradually were excluded from them. Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753-1784) Given the hardships of life in early America, it is ironic that some of the best poetry of the period was written by an exceptional slave woman. The first African-American author of importance in the United States, Phillis Wheatley was born in Africa and brought to Boston, Massachusetts, when she was about seven, where she was purchased by the pious and wealthy tailor John Wheatley to be a companion for his wife. The Wheatleys recognized Phillis’s remarkable inte.

Movie Journals

Journal 1 What’s cooking? Explain the representation of women and their roles in their families. Explain the role of the generational conflict. How does the setting design tell about the characters? The film What’s cooking? is about four different families all coming from different cultures, but focuses primarily on the women of each. We have a Jewish mother who is trying to accept the fact that her daughter is a homosexual and trying to eases the acceptance. Then we have the Nguyens, the mother follows the Vietnamese traditions really tightly and depends on her eldest son to help guide her young children.In the Avila family we see  Elizabeth, whose macho husband has left her for her cousin and has found consolation with a colleague. In the Williamses the wife is dealing with an infidelity from the husband as well as putting up with an annoying mother in law. These family problems show us that every women has the same problems no matter what ethnicity they are or cult ure. Throughout the film we see generational conflict. In the Williamses's family we see a conflict between the wife and the mother in law when they were arguing if the turkey was ready.The mother in law has different ways, â€Å"old styles† of cooking and preparing food, which causes them to bump heads. Also in the same family the father and son don’t see eye to eye in the son’s education. The son wants to go to Howard, an all black college. His father doesn’t want that for his son he tells him that he would rather like him to go to a University like UCSB and be part of the white patriarchal capitalistic society, but the son feels that it is more important for him to cope with his minority group. The visual designs used to portray the houses tell us a lot about the families.The Williamses house is the biggest out of all the homes. This shows that they are of a high socioeconomic class. When compared to the Nguyens we see that the Nguyens are of a lower s ocioeconomic class. We also see this when they are preparing the mash potatoes for the thanksgiving dinner. The Nguyens use their hands to mash the potatoes while the Williamses use a blender to mash it for them. The Nguyens are clinging to their Vietnamese traditions so tightly they haven't a clue how to listen to their children. The Seeligs house decor seems to be old school insinuating that they have lived in the neighborhood for a while.They seem to be conservative keeping their old traditions. We see this when the father doesn’t want his daughter to tell his relatives that she is a lesbian and has a girlfriend. Journal 2 Hairspray Explain how Tracy challenges the ideology of her time. Explain how she challenges the way women are perceived. Explain how color acts as a way of explaining the world of the film. Tracy challenges the ideology of her time in many different aspects. Tracy lives in the 60’s when society was dominated by a white patriarchal system. Segregat ion was still going on but it was on its last terms.Tracy challenges the system by questioning why the African Americans only danced one a month on Negro day and why they couldn’t dance along side with the white kids. Questioning the Jim Crow laws that were a big part of society at the time, which kept people segregated. She also challenges the patriarchal society when she confronts the police which are the repressive state apparatus and how they don’t allow integration. Tracy challenges the way women are perceived in films. In most films women are these skinny tall beautiful women who get what they want. In hairspray Tracy is the opposite of this norm that has been adapted for women.She is a short big girl who is in love with the most attractive guy at school. Who in reality has no chance with him what so ever. Despite all of this she makes him fall in love with her challenging the norms. Showing us that anything is possible to achieve and that the true character of a person is defined by inner qualities rather than outer ones like skin, color, dress size or hair style. The colors in the movie play an important role on how the movie is seen. We see that the Corny Collins show is in black and white showing us that it is an example of how close minded people where at that time in history.At the end when the Corny Collins show gets rid of the segregated dancing we see Queen Latifah wearing a bright golden clothing to symbolize that they have reached their ultimate goal, which is to finally be assimilated and accepted into society. Journal 3 The Birds Discuss The Birds through an analysis of the male gazes. How is Melanie Daniels power taken from her? why? When we analyze the film The Birds through the male gaze we see through the eyes of Mitch, or Mitch’s point of view as he seems to view her for her sexuality and aggressiveness.She seems to want Mitch to watch her and goes out of her way to be sure that he does. In another scene as she is h olding the lovebirds in the elevator she seems in some ways to be posing for the gentleman in the elevator with her. As she leaves the elevator her eyes seem to go to the side in a very cautious manner to see if the man is watching as she leaves the elevator. She seems to know the power and desire of her sexuality as we view her through the camera lens in the same way as one might view someone who is on display and want to be seen.This especially can be seen when Melanie’s has come on to Mitch in some highly suggestive manners and he tells her, â€Å"back in your gilded cage Melanie Daniels. † He seems to suggest that she in fact is too much for him to handle sexually and mentally, and the bird cages symbolizes that maybe Melanie sees herself as one of those love birds and seeks love, and freedom from her own cage in life. Melanie is seen as a woman of strength and grace who is not afraid to go after what she wants and does not care who knows it.She is also aggressive and daring, as well as independent which makes all of these things admirable to some men, but could also frighten some men. The film seems to follow the ideology of investigate and punish we see this when Melanie is stripped from her power for defying the patriarchal rules. Melanie’s power is taken away when she gets attacked by the birds. When she is getting attacked she is moaning in a sexual way as if she were getting raped by the birds. Symbolizing how she is being stripped from her aggressiveness and confidence. Showing us how vulnerable she really is.The final step that tells us that her power has been completely removed is when we see her red nails ruined. Mitch’s mom no longer sees her as a threat of taking Mitch away from her so she holds her trying to console her, approving of her. Journal 4 Sunset Boulevard Is Norma Desmond a sympathetic character in the film? Who has the most power in the film? In the film Sunset Boulevard Norma Desmond is seen as a sympath etic character towards the middle of the film when the audience notices that she is stuck in her past, living in a dream, â€Å"waiting for the cameras†.It is her egoistic attitude and her actions that make the audience feel bad and sympathize her. We can also sympathize when she cuts her wrist because Joe has gone out to work on the movie script with Betty and thinks he is cheating on her. She makes the audience feel bad for her. When she finds out that there will be no film she goes crazy in disbelief In the last scene we see a fade in of Norma’s face this causes her to look and seem crazy with the help of the lighting. This makes the audience feel somewhat compassionate and sympathy for her. It seems that Norma Desmond has the most power in the film.Sunset Boulevard being a film noir takes part of the castration complex. She is seen as a â€Å"predator† aggressive and waiting for its prey so she can attack it making her a femme fatales. We see this when she s ees Joe. She jumps all over him tries to buy him, making him want to stay. Joe being in the financial crisis that he was in made him vulnerable and susceptible to Norma’s control. Also in the film we see when she goes and buys Joe a suit, not knowing what to get the store owner tells him to get the expensive one that she is paying making him not be the provider. It is seen again when Joe goes to the pharmacy to buy Norma cigarettes.She hands him the money and Joe seems to be hesitant to take it. It seems that his male â€Å"provider† ego seems to not approve of the money given to him by Norma. It gets to a point that Joe actually starts to get use to the life he has. We can see Norma is in control over Joe because she takes away his life because he is living her. Making her have the power in the film. Journal 5 Out of the past Why is Jeff Bailey considered a classic film noir anti hero? Discuss the use of the male gaze in reference to the two central females, Kathie an d Ann. Jeff Bailey is seen as a classic film noir anti hero in Out of the past.An anti-hero is a protagonist that does not always make choices that audiences would make, or has different, more unsound motivations than a typical hero. He can be shown to make poor or unethical choices yet is still intended to get the sympathy of the audience. This adds a complexity to the films and challenges many of traditions of literature and cinema. This makes us question the character of this protagonist, and yet we are forced to follow and empathize with him, because he carries the story. Jeff perfectly fits into this category. When he has the flashback of when he goes to Mexico to go look for Kathie who has taken 40000 dollars.Kathie being a perfect example of a femme fatale seduces him and makes him fall in love with her. She does this so he doesn’t turn her in, messing with his job orders. At the end Jeff is killed by Kathie because he has ran away with her not following the norms that the audience would expect, sending a subliminal message on the consequences if one were to act in that manner. The male gaze is used in the film and we can see it in the two central female actresses Kathie and Ann. The way they are portrayed through the male gaze is very different. We see Ann as a non seductive woman, that has an angelic face.The clothes she wears are not revealing and leave room for imagination. While Kathie on the other hand is seen as a very seductive women that does whatever it takes to get what she wants. Also the lighting used for each actress is different. For Kathie at times we see she is in a dark background and we can’t see her face. Making her a mysterious, cynical character. While Ann on the other hand is always in the light and we see her face symbolizing innocence. The angles at which they are filmed are also a factor. When Kathie is being filmed we see that she is looking down at Jeff, making her look superior.With Ann she is always at eye lev el with Jeff. Journal 6 Is Run Lola, Run truly a feminist film or does the male gaze still apply to this film? The film Run Lola, Run follows the feminist film theory but still has some male gaze point of views. The lead female character in Run Lola Run, is the heroine. Lola comes to the rescue of her boyfriend Manni, which disrupts the popular model, norm of men portrayed as the heroes of society. This film is set in Berlin where Manni loses a small fortune of his mob-boss’s money and relies on Lola to save his life.She has twenty minutes to gather 100,000 and meet him at a designated location or Manni will be killed. Not only is Run Lola Run unique because the woman is the heroine, but also because it combines animation and hand held camera to create a variety of experiences through different types of shot. The literacy design is coupled with a limited dialogue and more action, the film goes against the norm of popular cinema. Lola shows the audience that she has the power to shape what is going on around her, throughout each round. During the course of the film we see the game theory in action, there are three realities that play out.Each segment concludes with a different outcome. The choices of the main characters, Lola, alter the ending. Lola proves to be a strong and compelling person through examples such as her glass shattering scream. At one point it seems to own mystic powers, when it affected a game of roulette that Lola needed to win in order to acquire money to save Manni. There are other aspects of Lola’s power, as in her intense running throughout the entire film, robbing her father as well as helping in robbing of the supermarket, and saving another man’s life by simply holding his hand.Although she is white and slender, has bright dyed red hair, is very athletic, has tattoos, and is not the average beauty. The film not only challenges societal idea of what a woman should be, it also undermines the way films are commonly u sed to construct a reality for the viewer by going against the norm of shots, narrative, time, and the power of the individual. Lola is the writer of her own life, she takes an active role in her story as well as others.